Donald Trump shook up America. Now it's the world's turn. The President-elect's decision to flout 40 years of diplomatic convention and take a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen last week suggested he may be just as disrespectful of protocol on the world stage as at home. The call produced days of speculation about how the President-elect's impulsive style will reverberate around the globe and whether it could threaten the architecture of international relations. There are many global traditions and arrangements that he could target, though each could carry a geopolitical or diplomatic price -- one reason even presidents who...

Don't expect the word "communist" to join the host of adjectives that precede the word "studies" in academe. Genuine studies of communist oppression don't fit the academic narrative. At a Heritage Foundation panel discussion recently, Kim Jeong-Ah, founder of Tongil Mom, spoke through a translator to detail the human rights situation of North Korean defecting mothers who have to leave their Chinese-Korean children behind in China due to Chinese policies. As the Heritage Foundation's announcement read: "One of the tragic consequences of the dire human rights situation in North Korea has been defectors risking imprisonment or death to escape to...

But Iran, freed of sanctions, is likely to be the spoiler The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2321 (2016) on November 30th. It condemns the North Korean (DPRK) regime’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles while its people continue to suffer under inhumane conditions. The resolution strengthens previous UN-imposed sanctions on the DPRK in response to its fifth nuclear test conducted on September 9, 2016. The prior resolutions have failed to slow, much less eliminate, the DPRK’s nuclear program involving the development and testing of both nuclear device and ballistic missile capabilities. As UN Secretary General...

North Korea is observing a three-day period of mourning for Fidel Castro, seen by the North as a rare comrade-in-arms against the common enemy of the United States. State media reported Monday that the North has ordered flags outside official buildings be flown at half-staff to honor Castro. The iconic Cuban leader died Friday at age 90. Reports from Pyongyang said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a wreath to the Cuban Embassy and that a delegation of senior North Korean officials has left for Havana to attend Castro’s memorial services.

Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 science-fiction film Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2154. The wealthy have moved into an orbiting luxury satellite—the Elysium of the title—while the wretched majority of humans remain in squalor on Earth. The film works passably as an allegory for its director’s native South Africa, where racial apartheid was enforced for nearly 50 years, but it’s a rather cartoonish vision of the American future. Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90...

Main picture: NK Pro A new modern-style corvette with low-observable radar characteristics has been spotted in North Korea’s northeastern port of Najin in Rason, high-resolution photos obtained exclusively by NK Pro have revealed. Two sets of photos taken during different periods in 2016 show a heavily armed, 77-meter long vessel with radar cross-section (RCS) reducing features docked adjacent to a helicopter-capable but minimally armed support ship. Equipped with two Kumsong-3 anti-ship cruise missile launchers, a short-range surface-to-air missile system, torpedo launchers and rotary canons, the reduced-RCS corvette also includes capacity for large caliber naval cannon, the NK Pro analysis reveals....

News Corporation said on Sunday that it had no record of being notified by the Justice Department nearly three years ago of a subpoena for the telephone records of a reporter at its Fox News cable channel. The company’s chief legal counsel at the time also said that he had never seen material from the government related to the subpoena. The Justice Department has signaled that it notified News Corporation on Aug. 27, 2010, that it had seized the phone records of a Fox News reporter — who turned out to be the Washington correspondent James Rosen — after one...

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday it was “probably a lost cause” trying to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons capability. But a State Department spokesman said that was not the Obama administration’s position — denuclearization of the peninsula remains the goal. “I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause,” Clapper said at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “They are not going to do that. That is their ticket to survival.” Clapper said from Pyongyang’s perspective, “they are under siege and they...

"John McAfee -- in an email exchange and follow up phone call just moments ago -- said sources within the Dark Web suggest it was Iran, and he absolutely agrees. While Russian hackers get more media attention nowadays, Iranian hackers have had their share. "

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned Wednesday that any attack on American allies or use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be met with an "overwhelming" U.S. response. He was speaking at the start of talks between the top U.S. and South Korea diplomats and defense officials to discuss their response to the growing threat from North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. The meeting comes weeks after the North's most powerful nuclear test explosion to date, and days after its failed test launch of a ballistic missile.

North Korea, angered by what it says are increasingly “aggressive” exercises in the South in conjunction with U.S. forces, said it will strike first with nuclear weapons if it feels threatened. North Korea also stated it will continue nuclear tests after its recent, 5th nuclear event and will continue ballistic missile testing. The North has launched over 20 ballistic missile shots in recent months as it strives to increase its ability to deliver payload on target. “The US has nuclear weapons off our coast, targeting our country, our capital and our dear leader, Kim Jong Un. We will not step...

Author’s Note: There’s a lot of information to cover here in one article. There are tremendous amounts of cross-references and sources. Some of these items you are undoubtedly familiar with; the report’s objective is to compile important details, dates, statements, and actions to present an overall view. This is to provide you with a “compendium” of actions taken and information gathered to refer to this real and imminent threat of a North Korean (or other nation’s) capabilities to strike the U.S. with an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon. For many years, now, the U.S. has been initiating actions with nations through...

South Korea has had no discussions whatsoever with the United States about a preemptive strike on North Korea, Seoul's ambassador to Washington said. Amb. Ahn Ho-young made the remark during a parliamentary audit of his embassy on Saturday as talk of removing North Korea's nuclear facilities through a military strike has surfaced in the U.S. in the wake of Pyongyang's fifth nuclear test. "We've had no such discussions at least here in Washington," Ahn said during the audit held at the embassy. "We've never received a request from the U.S. government for discussions about a preemptive strike." Last month, an...

<p>SEOUL, South Korea - A North Korean soldier crossed the border that separates the country from one of its major rivals, South Korea, to defect, the South Korean Army announced on Thursday.</p>
<p>The military authorities are now investigating the North Korean soldier who defected by crossing the central-eastern zone of the military demarcation line located inside the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) wide Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries, the South Korea Defense High Command said.</p>

The Treasury Department and Justice Department took actions Monday against four Chinese individuals and one Chinese company for conspiring to aid North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in violation of U.S. economic sanctions. The unsealing of criminal charges and the imposition of new sanctions are aimed at shutting down a major Chinese node supporting North Korea’s weapons proliferation, officials said. The Justice Department charged the individuals and the trading company with conspiring to launder money and with evading sanctions. The four individuals and the company are all located in China. …

Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “Di Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are: 1. Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels. 2. The village of...

In an article titled North Korean Nukes, South Korea, Japan, China and Obama, posted the day after North Korea's most recent nuke test, September 9th, I contended that China would not honor Obama's request to make North Korea stop developing and testing nukes. China has remained a faithful ally of North Korea since the end stage of the Korean Conflict and "sees Obama, not as the representative of the world’s greatest power, but as a joke. He has no clout internationally and is a national embarrassment." NB: I had hoped to publish this article more than a week ago, but my...

The two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were known as “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” The world today has two new nuclear bombs. One is named “Fat Bill.” The other is named “Little Hillary.” The “Bill Clinton” bomb is the one getting the most headlines as North Korea continues testing its nuclear weapons. The Communist dictatorship is on its fifth test already and achieved an explosion almost at the level of “Little Boy” which was dropped on Hiroshima. North Korea has let it be known that this test has allowed it to produce standardized nuclear warheads “able to be mounted...

What is cyber warfare and why should you care? That question was one that this writer asked himself many times. I thought that it had to do with someone stealing my personal identity. You know, opening a charge account in my name or emptying out my bank account. I, probably like many reading this, paid no attention to it until recently being hit with someone emptying out my bank account. And then, like the proverbial person who closes the gate after all of the horses have escaped, did I try to learn more about it. While there are no easy...

North Korea is ready to conduct another nuclear test at any time, South Korea's defence ministry has claimed - just days after Pyongyang sparked worldwide condemnation with its fifth and most powerful test. Officials in Seoul say South Korea's military has been placed on full combat readiness to respond to 'further nuclear tests, ballistic missile launches or land provocation' by the North. It comes as it emerged that the South is planning to 'annoy' its neighbour by blasting loud K-pop girl band music over the border. The army wants to set up a huge block of speakers and a giant...

The two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were known as “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”. The world today has two new nuclear bombs. One is named “Fat Bill”. The other is named “Little Hillary.”The “Bill Clinton” bomb is the one getting the most headlines as North Korea continues testing its nuclear weapons. The Communist dictatorship is on its fifth test already and achieved an explosion almost at the level of “Little Boy” which was dropped on Hiroshima.

SEOUL, Sept. 11 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has already developed a plan to annihilate the North Korean capital of Pyongyang through intensive bombing in case the North shows any signs of a nuclear attack, a military source in Seoul said Sunday. "Every Pyongyang district, particularly where the North Korean leadership is possibly hidden, will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells as soon as the North shows any signs of using a nuclear weapon. In other words, the North's capital city will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map," the source said. South Korea's Hyunmoo II...

On September 9th, North Korea conducted its fifth nuke test, of its most powerful nuke thus far. Can Obama get China to help make North Korea stop developing and testing nukes? Nope. China sees Obama, not as the representative of the world's greatest power, but as a joke. He has no clout internationally and is a national embarrassment.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PLVnqdj580 China and North Korea - a very short historyHere's a link to an article I posted on June 25, 2013 about the Korean conflict. To summarize, China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) have a long history of acting together....

Possible explosion, located near the location where North Korea has detonated nuclear explosions in the past. If this is indeed an explosion, the USGS National Earthquake Information Center cannot determine what type of explosion it may be, whether nuclear or any other possible type

A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un's personal tutor. David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident. But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea's Abductees' Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.

South Korea's Unification Ministry says North Korea appears to have executed a vice premier. Ministry spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said on Wednesday that vice premier Kim Yong Jin, who was in charge of education, allegedly disobeyed the ruling Korean Workers' Party. Other South Korean officials said Kim was investigated for laziness during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly in June. They believe he was killed by firing squad in mid-July. The spokesperson also said another senior North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol, has been subjected to "re-education." He is the head of the party's United Front Department handling inter-Korean relations....

After what North Korea claimed was the successful test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday, Pyongyang is on track to develop the capability to strike targets in the region, including Japan, by 2020, given the speed of its development, according to a website run by a U.S. research institute. The report posted on the website 38 North was compiled by the U.S. Korea Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. North Korea’s official media reported Thursday that leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of the SLBM and declared it...

North Korea fires submarine-based ballistic missile, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version

North Korea warned Monday that it would launch a preemptive nuclear attack against the U.S. and South Korea if they showed the “slightest sign of aggression” toward Pyongyang while conducting their annual military drills. The North’s Foreign Ministry said its “first-strike” units are prepared to conduct retaliatory strikes on South Korean and U.S. forces, threatening to turn the two nations into “a heap of ashes.” The 12-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian command and control drills began Monday with 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers participating, according to both militaries. Washington and Seoul have insisted that the exercises are defensive...

Josh Thomas, an American amateur brewer who was based in Hong Kong for five years, has tried what he described as an “absolutely insane amount” of Asian beers. He said that Taedonggang is “significantly better” than any other mass-market beer on the continent, chiefly because the best-selling beers of North Korea’s neighbors — Cass and Hite in South Korea, Snow and Tsingtao in China, and Asahi Super Dry and Kirin in Japan — are rice-based, light, and somewhat watered down. But since rice is so scarce in North Korea, brewers there tend to rely more on barley, which makes beer...

Seoul (CNN)A senior North Korean diplomat, along with his wife and children, has defected and reached safety in South Korea, making it the highest-level diplomatic defection from the Pyongyang regime in history. Thae Yong Ho, the deputy ambassador of the North Korean embassy in the UK, is under government protection, Jeong Joo-hee, a spokesman for the South Korean Unification Ministry, told reporters Wednesday.

North Korea has its first gold medal of the Rio Olympics after Rim Jong Sim won the women's 75-kilogram weightlifting class. Rim was utterly dominant, lifting 117 kilograms in the snatch and 153 in the clean and jerk for a total of 274, way ahead of the 258 managed by Belarusian silver medalist Darya Naumava, or 257 for Spain's Lidia Valentin Perez.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea's top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington "crossed the red line" and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month. Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North's Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing. The United States and South...

A North Korean short wave radio station abruptly returned to the airwaves last Friday after a sixteen year absence. The mysterious broadcast has South Korean intelligence agents scrambling to figure out what its message means-and whom the message was intended for. The transmission, which began at approximately 12:45 on Friday, was made by an unnamed female announcer and began with, "From now on, I will give review work for the subject of mathematics under the curriculum of a remote education university for exploration agents of the 27th bureau." The announcer went on to say, "On page 459, question number 35,...

Pyongyang launched three missiles Tuesday morning in the latest in a set of controversial ballistic tests, according to South Korea’s military, which claimed the projectiles had a range of up to 600 kilometers (360 miles). The three missiles were launched from the North’s east coast into the sea at between 5:45am and 6:20am local time. The missiles, presumed to be Scud-types, have enough range to reach all of South Korea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, adding that South Korea's military is keeping a close eye on the developments. #BREAKING North Korea fires three ballistic missiles, says South...

On July 6, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and other senior North Korean individuals and organizations for human rights violations. This is the first time that the U.S. has designated North Korean entities for human rights abuses. The administration should be commended for finally acting upon the February 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report which concluded that North Korea’s human rights violations were so widespread and systemic as to constitute “crimes against humanity.” That said, the Obama administration’s action, like its designation last month of North Korea as a primary money-laundering concern, was likely...

North Korea has sent hundreds of workers to labor as “state-sponsored slaves” in member states as Pyongyang seeks to circumvent international sanctions aimed at starving it of money over its nuclear weapons program, rights campaigners said on Wednesday (5 July). North Korean laborers commonly work 10-12 hour shifts, six days a week, but up to 90% of their pay is sent back to the hermit state, according to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK). Most are working in Polish shipyards, construction sites and farms. North Koreans are also employed in leisure and clothing firms in Malta,...

Ambassadorships to major countries and trouble spots were typically given out to professional diplomats. You might send a donor with no diplomatic experience off to play ambassador to Gambia or Cyprus, but not to France or China. Obama changed that as he changed so many things, dispatching a ridiculously incompetent donor to serve as ambassador to the UK and after failing to make Caroline Kennedy the senator from New York (after some Schumer sabotage and a New Yorker backlash), Princess Caroline had to settle for being the US ambassador to Japan where she's hard at work demonstrating the diplomatic...

Facebook is like North Korea, says ex-Facebooker Technically Incorrect: In his new book, former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martinez says Facebook management got upset if women's skirts were too short. Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. Many younger types imagine Facebook as a nirvana where you skateboard down corridors, code all night long and wait for the money to start rolling in. Antonio García Martinez thinks it's a little more like North Korea. The former (and fired) Facebook product manager today released a book called "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and...

Mainstream media outlets in Great Britain and the US were running news Sunday of a stunning petition that shows 2 million people want a new Brexit vote. Over “two million” signed the referendum in less than 24 hours! The BBC, The Mirror, France 24, The Telegraph, Manchester Evening News, The Guardian… all reported on the bogus petition. But they got punked. The poll was manufactured by 4Chan and Anonymous hackers who loaded up the signatures with fake names from The Vatican, Ghana, North Korea and elsewhere.

USAF F-15C fires an AIM-7 Sparrow in 2005. (Wikipedia) A newfound data breach of 160 South Korean firms and government agencies has put unclassified U.S. fighter jet blueprints in the hands of North Korean hackers, government officials in Seoul announced Monday. The attackers — reportedly using an IP address tied to a computer located in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — targeted network management software, South Korean police said in a press briefing Monday. The police declined to name the hacked software product. The broader hack reportedly went on for about two years before South Korea discovered it in...

The Democrats' acrimonious primary battle came back to haunt Hillary Clinton yesterday, a day before she sets off on her first solo campaign swing for Barack Obama, with John McCain using footage of her attacking the Democratic candidate in a new campaign ad. The ad, which was released on the internet, features a number of Democratic leaders - including Obama - offering praise for McCain. But only Clinton, who is the closing speaker, goes so far as to take a jab at Obama, in footage culled from one of her primary rallies. The ad surfaced a day before Clinton is...

Hillary Clinton called Barack Obama “irresponsible and frankly naïve,” Barack Obama fired back that electing Hillary Clinton could mean “continuing with Bush-Cheney policies,” and finally Hillary Clinton asked, “What’s ever happened to the politics of hope?” So went the first full-throttle front-runners’ spat in the Democratic race, and among the many consequences of the earlier-than-expected (and Hillary-instigated) sniping should be the muting of talk of a Clinton-Obama ticket. On paper, such a pairing would be the perfect recipe for a party hungry to win back the White House and too keep it for some time, with the youthful Mr. Obama...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama accused rival Hillary Clinton of saber rattling toward Iran on Sunday and compared her approach to that of unpopular President George W. Bush. "I think it's language that's reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber rattling," Obama said of Clinton's threat to "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. "It is important that we use language that sends a signal to the world community that we're shifting from the sort of cowboy diplomacy, or lack of diplomacy, that we've seen out of George Bush," the...

Senator John McCain, looking ahead to a possible general-election matchup with Senator Barack Obama, attacked Mr. Obama on Wednesday for what he called a weak and naïve approach to the conflict in Iraq and the effort to combat international terrorism. Seizing on a comment from Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, said that Mr. Obama’s plan to rapidly withdraw American troops from Iraq would leave the country in the hands of Al Qaeda and possibly other terrorist groups. In response to a hypothetical question at the debate, Mr. Obama said that although he intended to...

WATERTOWN, S.D. - (AP) Barack Obama laid into John McCain on Friday for advancing a tough-guy foreign policy that he called "naive and irresponsible," serving notice that he's ready to launch a full-throttle challenge to the Republican presidential contender on international relations in the general election campaign. Lumping McCain together with President Bush, Obama declared: "If they want a debate about protecting the United States of America, that's a debate I'm ready to win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for." He blamed Bush for policies that enhance the strength of terrorist groups such as...

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's offer to meet without precondition with leaders of renegade nations such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran touched off a war of words, with rival Hillary Rodham Clinton calling him naive and Obama linking her to President Bush's diplomacy. Older politicians in both parties questioned the wisdom of such a course, while Obama's supporters characterized it as a repudiation of Bush policies of refusing to engage with certain adversaries. It triggered a round of competing memos and statements Tuesday between the chief Democratic presidential rivals. Obama's team portrayed it as a bold stroke; Clinton supporters saw...